First impressions of Terraform Enterprise Free Tier (Beta)

So a few weeks ago, I received an invite to trialTerraform Enterprise Free Tier. During last year’sHashiconf 2018, it was announced that Hashicorp will start offering free tier state storage for Terraform deployments. This excited me as my past deployments have always had a bit of discussion, debate and setup of Terraform statefiles.

Existing Terraform backends

Now if you are a seasoned Infracoder, you quickly learn that the Terraform state file is a key piece of the puzzle when deploying infrastructure via the Terraform workflow. The state file allows infrastructure engineers the ability to compare/perform a dry run of expected what changes will be made to their infrastructure with the simpleterraform plan. Choosing where this lives and who has access to the statefile is a critical decision when initialising your terraform infra deployment. Over the years, terraform has provided a few backend options where your Terraform state file can live:

Statefile Location

Description

Insights

Local

Local workstation

Quick and easy when working on your own, but what if you wanted to collaborate with others or have your statefile backed up?

Cloud storage solutions

eg AWS S3 buckets, Azure or GCP blob storage ) is used to store the state.

This requires further setup from your preferred cloud provider.

Security access and controls are required (eg ACLs, encryption)

Some cloud backends provide state locking and some require further setup. (State locking is the ability for practitioners to lock the state file so no one else can make changes.)

Consul

Hashicorp’s KeyValue store typically used for service discovery and service mesh capabilities